Manchester United fans have been left livid by yet another hike in ticket prices from the club ahead of the 2025-26 season.
The Premier League released their fixture list for the coming season, with Ruben Amorim's struggling United side handed a nightmare start to the campaign.
Recommended
United will face Arsenal, Manchester City, and Chelsea in their opening five games of the season, but for any home games of that calibre, club members will have to pay a hefty premium.
The ticket prices at Old Trafford are set to be the most expensive in the club's modern history, with tickets for some home league games reaching £97. The most expensive official tickets at Old Trafford last season were £66 after a mid-season price hike that was itself hugely controversial with the club's fans.
Manchester United have introduced a new four-category tiering of pricing, with Category D reserved for certain cup games (not all). Category C applies only to games against Sunderland and Wolves, and will see tickets cost £37. Category A tickets will cost a whopping £97 for the games against Arsenal, Chelsea, Liverpool, Manchester City, Newcastle, and Tottenham.
When away tickets and season tickets are taken into account, there are only about 20,000 tickets available to members for each home game. Fans must be club members to access tickets.
Advertisement
Owners INEOS have faced vociferous protests over the past year, with many of them centring around the steep ticket price increases - season tickets are also set to rise in price by 5% this season.
Against the backdrop of United having completed their worst campaign in decades, the Manchester United Supporters Trust (MUST) have described the latest hikes as a "kick in the teeth."
READ HERE:The 4 Former League of Ireland Players At The Club World Cup
Advertisement
READ HERE:Amorim Under Pressure As Fixture List Confirms Brutal Premier League Start For Man United
Manchester United supporters protest 'kick in the teeth' ticket prices
In a statement released on Wednesday, MUST said:
After how last season went, we might have hoped the Club would reconsider their plans for this new ticketing model which will see eye-watering price increases for 20,000 supporters per game who buy tickets on a match-by-match basis. This really is a fresh kick in the teeth for Manchester United fans.
When the Club said they were introducing this new model for Members tickets, we urged them to keep the majority of matches at current levels and only apply the highest price category for a small number of the biggest games, and reduced prices for lower demand games. Once again, they have failed to consult any of the fans representative bodies on the details of the decision, and once again they’re making choices against the interests of fans and, we believe, the Club as a whole.
The Club’s stated commitment to fan representation is fine in principle, but once again is not being delivered in practice. The structure is in place, and the Fans Forum and FAB representatives are doing their job, but the Club are not adhering to their previous commitment to proper consultation and that needs to change and change fast.
What Manchester United needs next season is a united fanbase and Club, with the team on the pitch supported by loyal and vocal fans roaring it back after the disaster that was last year. These ticketing decisions only push those regular supporters away in favour of occasional visitors and risk pricing out the next generation of younger fans who are the very future of the Club. This Match Categorisation model will do enormous harm and undermine the atmosphere in the ground in a season when the team will need it more than ever.
Against the backdrop of a cost-of-living crisis, and with Manchester United at their lowest ebb since the pre-Alex Ferguson years, it's hard to justify such a substantial increase in ticket prices at Old Trafford.
However, Jim Ratcliffe and INEOS have remained steadfast in their ruthless cost-cutting exercises thus far, and it would appear unlikely this will change any time soon.
SEE ALSO:Power Ranking The 10 Most Important Ireland Players Ahead Of WC Qualifiers
ireland player power rankings
Advertisement